Mercedes Youngtimers

Why youngtimer? I don’t know, but it started somewhere in my childhood. I was always helping my father, when he was repairing the family car, and I loved to get dirty by oil. During the years when I was growing up, I reapaired my bike, motorcycle, and my car. Because I was a child in the 80s, my favorits were the top cars of this era, the Benz 500 and the Porsche 911. The bad guys in the movies were driving those cars, i was dreaming about, to have one. But I grown up, started to work, and changed my dreams to reliable, boring cars. Something was missing. Then my brother repaired the ’85 380SE of one of our friend, and during the testdrive, I felt, I’m lost. I sold the Astra, and the hunt season started, the target was to find a nice 126 sedan. I found the „real one” quite fast, he was a 280SE from ’82, 2 overhad cams, 6 cylinder, wonderful lapisblaumetallic color!


I made a quick deal, and forget everything about what I learned trough the college years, when I was dealing with used cars, I made all of the possible mistakes. Some days after, when I started to calm down, it turned out, that it was not the deal of the century… But I was motivated, I was confident, that I can solve all the problems! Sometimes, when I had not got the necessary tools, the car had to be repaired by „professionals”, but after these, the car get worse. Then, I decided to do everything with by my own hands, and get all of the skills required. Because it was not a perfect car, I learned the lesson. Today, I’m a specialist of the type, auto trans to fuel injection, I can solve everything.

What can you do with a Youngtimer?
Rebuild it and give them TLC (tender, love and care). But if it’s „finished” you are afraid to use it daily, you drive it only if the sun is shining, so you will need a garage and a 2. car, for the daily usage. It was my case too, the 500 leaves the garage only when it is dry outside, and the sky is blue. I had to buy another car(s), one of them is a Benz too. The story of the 500 started in 2004 when my friend, Szabi find the car in east Hungary, in a garden, where it was resting for more than 8 years. It was looking terrible, everywhere the dirt of 8 years, scratches, dents, in some places vegetation is already started, we could not start the engine, but I was still interested.

After half year of dealing, the car was bougth and transpoted to my town, and the restoraiton started. Under the ugly exterior, the technic was okay, so it just had to be cleaned and painted, and after I had a perfect car! The options of the car are still enough, it has cruise control, A/T,A/C, airbag, ABS. Since the moment I bought the car, I had a picture in my mind, and it was a Benz with a classic, 80’s style tuning optic! I found everything necessary on the internet, a complete car, with spoilers, rims, but the seller wanted to sell the complete car, not only parts of it, so I bought that car. It was disassembled, and with this, I assured spare parts for the upcomming years.

When the dream came true, what can you do more? You must show it to everyone!

For this the regular meetings of our club are the ideal opportunities. But there's a better one! Racing! In the last years old and youngtimer races became more and more popular. In this kind of competitions, the power of the car is not important, only the skills and knowledge of the team, what is minimum 2 persons, driver and navigator. The competitors gets only an itiner with the intersections, and an exercise book, what should be filled out on the checkpoints. At the spring of 2007 my team started on our first race, organized by Yetro. It was held on the north of the Lake Balaton. The route touched all of the old castles in the region. It started at Balatonfüred and the first day was finished also there. We spent the second day in Tihany, where the checkpoints were on Sunday. We were very surprised, that we have  won our first race! Since that, we participated on 2 races, and get a 3rd place! Some friends from the club were also interested, so we started 4 teams with Benz’s on the last race! We are already waiting for the race of this spring! In the meantime, on our yearly 4days clubmeeting we organized a one day competion for the members, and it was a success! So we continue on this path!